friday fluff

One of the cutest videos I've ever seen and a groovy song to boot -

sewing companion

Lucy always amazes me, how a big dog whose height reaches just above my knee can curl herself into such a tight little ball.

Each morning when I sew before work she comes in to the sewing room and quietly lies somewhere out of the way.

Although, I think she's a bit disgruntled that I'm not lighting a fire so much any more and just have the little fan heater going. This girlie really loves a fire, and will usually get so hot in front of the lounge room wood heater she'll start panting before she decides she'd better move away to cool off.

Thanks also for the dacks sewing encouragement. I've nearly finished cutting all those pieces out but have to buy some suitable lining fabric this arvo, so yeah, that means more pieces to sew!

dacks for me

Here's my new dacks (pants - usually applied to track pants, ie: trackie dacks), cat hair and all, that I made from the pure wool fabric I bought at the Waverley sale (as mentioned in the 'tired' post). I had to line them of course or else they'd just be way too itchy so I used some of the green toile type cotton fabric Ant bought for me a while ago and it works a treat. These pants are so warm, and I wear them a lot too.

So next is Ant's dacks. I started to cut out the pattern this morning (an old Vogue one), and it has 20 pattern pieces!!! I've never made men's pants before, it even has a piece called a 'crotch guard' - huh? Makes me think of Elizabethan times and I have to make a cod piece. Hmmmm the words "time and place" comes to mind.....

friday fluff

I love this fabric and I'm trying to find more of it.

I only bought a fat quarter of it a while ago from a shop on Ebay who doesn't sell it any more, since then I've tried many on-line fabrics shops but to no avail.

.... hmmph!

holy glove!

I love my gloves. They're perfect for riding the bike in winter, especially because they're quite long and so give my arms some extra warmth. This is the second hole I've had to darn though, and in a perfect world I'd already would've knitted a new pair but I've got this other thing on the go -

It's a jumper/pullover/sweater (depending on which country you live in) that I've been knitting for Anthony over the past, ummm, 2 years? It's a lovely jumper in herringbone stitch, I never used to be into patterned knitting - I much prefer fair isle but I've quite enjoyed this stitch. The wool is Australian, an alpaca blend. It's lovely to knit with and very warm. I've finished the front, back, one sleeve and have started the second sleeve, so it's not like it will take ages to finish.

I usually knit the smaller stuff like gloves beanies and socks, but it's been a long time between big projects so I thought I'd give it a go and now that the end is in sight I usually pick up the pace a bit.

Maybe I'll have the gloves for next winter......

tired

It was a busy weekend but tiring. We went to Hobart Saturday morning after taking advantage of the Waverley Woollen Mill sale, where I picked up some more blanket ends for making into coats and such, and also 5 metres of black light weight pure wool. It seems Ant and I both would like a pair of winter weight pants, so this will be more than enough - yay. Waverley usually have one sale each year in May which I missed, luckily Ant noticed an ad in the paper on Friday so I got my fix after all.

Hobart was good and cold as usual, with an excellent dumping of snow on the mountain. We travel through Hobart so many times on our way to Bruny Island, it was nice to be able to stop and check out the shops for a change. I've been wanting to visit Love & Clutter for ages, Tara has been selling her pincushions there for a while and I've heard lots of lovely things about it. There were a lot of handmade clothes by L J Struthers which I could've gone bankrupt for, beautiful simple pieces with sublime fabrics. Yep, I'm running out of adjectives again .......

We were invited to a 60th birthday party on Saturday night, hence a bit of dawdling in downtown Hobart. Sunday saw us make a brief visit to Bruny for a spot of oyster work before embarking on the 3 hour trip home. Thankfully Ant's parents invited us to tea (dinner/supper) so that was one less thing to think about.

Anyways, the ever inspiring, ever creative Lara has tagged me - which is so very kind of her!

Here's da rules -

1. Link to the person who “tagged” you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know your entry is up.

So, um.....

1. I have to hold Lucy's lead in my right hand so she walks on my right side. Even though I'm right handed I prefer to have my left hand free.

2. I've been hit by 3 different cars on 3 different occasions and never seriously injured. First time in primary school on my bike riding home, second time in high school on my bike riding home and third time on foot crossing the street on my way home from work. Does this mean anything? At least it hasn't stopped me from riding a bike.

3. My 'OCD' contribution: when I'm hanging out the washing I have to use matching coloured clothes pegs that also have to match the colour of the clothes or be a nice contrast, ie: the pegs can't clash with the clothes.

4. I have 2 sets of parents (many of you know this already), adopted parents and natural parents whom I was reunited with when I was 21 years old. I'll elaborate on this one someday soon.

5. One of my earliest memories is of chasing my older brothers who were chasing the bread man who delivered our bread with his horse and cart (in suburbia too) on their way to school. My brothers shooed me away and told me to go home. I must have been about 2 years old, that's only 37 years ago.

6. I hate sleeping bags, they make me feel claustrophobic. Maybe I got tangled up in one when I was a kid, I hate the thought of not being able to move!

So there you go. I'll probably wake up at 3am tomorrow morning with a real corker of a random thing but that's okay. I now tag Alice, Ann, Shannon, Mum, Cathy and Marlene, who all have lovely little blogs.

friday fluff

My latest Etsy purchase - another Japanese sewing book from A Little Good-ness.

Love it.

Simply love it.

Drool city....

The first thing I would like to whip up is this overshirt type dress, and in good time for spring too.

Have a great weekend everyone. :o)

seen Google maps lately?

This is a bit freaky really. If you type in your own address, and provided you street shows up on the map with a blue outline, you can actually view a photo of your house.

For my example here I decided to show the lovely Cocoon in downtown Launceston (click on the photo for a better view).

I can see it's benefits though, Loobylu is planning a trip to Japan and she's checking out places before she goes!

friday fluff - late mail

I figure I can still get away with this considering it's still Friday in some parts of the world...

This photo was taken during my morning walk on my camera phone, isn't it the grooviest fence?! It's nice to see people turning the mundane into something creative.

Thanks also for the Etsy love - a little encourgagement goes a long way believe me!

Loves ya, Fer.

it's a shop

In fact it's my Etsy shop! So come on by and see my wares. It's very meagre at the moment but it's a start. Yay for me....

And I'm a bit slack with putting this up -
The ever-so-lovely Marlene passed on this award, which was very kind of her! I'm supposed to pass it on to 5 bloggers but there's too many to chose from - they're all special to me, otherwise I'd never read them. So, you see all them peoples down the right hand side of my blog? I nominate them all. I know that's piking out big time but I just don't have the time to decide. :)

Then the even more ever-so-lovely Marlene also picked my name out of a hat for her giveaway - about time I finally won one!!
I especially love the paper dolls pattern (if you can make that out from the crappy photo), make a great baby quilt. Thanks Marlene!

Phew, lots happening and mostly good too. Now I have to think of some Friday Fluff for tomorrow.......

ye olde Singers rule

The more I use this bad boy the more I like it.

We've all been there though haven't we, any new piece of machinery (car, lawn mower, computer etc....) is just that bit daunting at first. There was a few different things I needed to learn with The Thug as well, one example is threading - snip off the old thread before it 'enters' the machine and tie the new thread on, pull the old thread through the machine (after removing it from the needle) and it will take the new thread with it. The main reason for this is because there's at least one little hook that is mighty hard to try and get the thread around doing it in the traditional manner. I've also learnt that this is the best way to change threads in an overlocker/serger.

I feel I'm mastering all the little quirks with this machine, and are not finding him so much of a Thug after all - more a gentle giant. He is big, and the motor under the table is loud, but I'm amazed at how slow it can actually go which enables me to have a lot more control and precision.

But this is the thing, it seems that we can't really get to know new machinery until we give them a personality, even a gender. My bicycle is a girl, my sewing machines are usually boys (there's also Bertie Bernina of course), fortunately the animals have a gender or else I'd assign them ones as well poor things/girls. I know not everyone is as bad as me, for some reason I find it important - or maybe I spent too much time being single before I met Ant. :)

friday fluff

In keeping with the cat themed week, here's some Simon's Cat for you. I could swear this was Gracie -



I first saw this Simon's Cat video on Shannon's blog and loved it. The good thing is that there's even more!

And a Tifa update? She's not hissing at us so much now and was actually pleased to see me yesterday when I fed her, raising her tail and a pretty little "meow" to boot.

Edit: since scheduling this post yesterday, there has been a rather feisty cat fight in the hall while I was out for only half an hour. Tifa was quite shaken and Gracie is very smug. *sigh*

Have a great weekend everyone!